The research proposed in this grant is concerned with the development of memory in children. This work focuses on in-depth analysis of rehearsal strategies that children of varying ages employ in complex memory tasks. Rehearsal has been shown to play a critical role in the memory performance of both adults and children, but an analysis of the dynamics of rehearsal in experiments with children has only begun. The proposed work builds upon the findings of Ornstein and Liberty and of Ornstein and Naus who employed an overt-rehearsal technique to examine rehearsal in children's free recall. These experiments (1) demonstrated interesting changes in rehearsal strategies that were correlated with recall performance, and (2) suggest that a thorough analysis of rehearsal processes as a function of age is necessary for an understanding of developmental changes in memory. The proposed research will center upon an analysis of rehearsal processes that children employ in the free-recall task. In addition, pilot work to investigate rehearsal development in memory search will be conducted so that rehearsal can be studied in recognition memory. Rehearsal-examination experiments which use the overt rehearsal procedure to observe the strategies that children spontaneously employ, and rehearsal-training experiments, which attempt to alter task performance by instructing children in more efficient mnemonic techniques will be conducted. It is thought that the findings of these developmental experiments will also yield information about memory per se, and may permit the construction of models to specify the role of rehearsal in the development of memory.